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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26998648">Fear of the Water</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pixeled/pseuds/Pixeled'>Pixeled</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Compilation of Final Fantasy VII</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>At odds with your nature, Break Up, Character Death, M/M, Suicide</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 00:22:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>963</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26998648</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pixeled/pseuds/Pixeled</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>They were two rocks that had started out rough and become smooth over decades of banging and rolling around a pressurized mill, but that did not mean they fit together. They had just gone through the same things. It wasn’t a cancer that could be rooted out, a toothache that antibiotics could solve. It was unsolvable. It was like trying to keep sand in your hands. It would always slip out of your grasp, the grains all separate but all one. Rock dust. Molecules. Star dust. They were both exploding stars. Done. Leaving behind the years they’d spent hanging in the sky, impressions of what they once were.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Reno/Tseng (Compilation of FFVII)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Fear of the Water</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>To SYML “Fear of the Water”</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tseng had dropped like a stone when it happened. He clung to his pant leg, but he pulled away. He held his breath until the door closed. Not with a bang, but a whimper. Some ancient call.</p><p>He saw his face every time he blacked out. Some ancient call. It’s in the walls and under the floor, he said to himself, like the ancient creak of a ghost.</p><p>It had been so long they were together.</p><p>Now it snapped. So disclocated. If it were an injury, a disease, they could treat it. But the problem was deeper than even that.</p><p>They were two rocks that had started out rough and become smooth over decades of banging and rolling around a pressurized mill, but that did not mean they fit together. They had just gone through the same things. It wasn’t a cancer that could be rooted out, a toothache that antibiotics could solve. It was unsolvable. It was like trying to keep sand in your hands. It would always slip out of your grasp, the grains all separate but all one. Rock dust. Molecules. Star dust. They were both exploding stars. Done. Leaving behind the years they’d spent hanging in the sky, impressions of what they once were.</p><p>Tseng stared at the drops as they formed—tentative at first, small, then swelling like the belly of a pregnant woman before it burst and splashed down, following all the drops that burst before it. The water was rising, the plug in. But he felt paralyzed, watching drop after drop join the rest of the water collecting in the sink. He looked up. The endless knot he’d made as a child after he met Veld hung above the bathroom mirror moved as if in the wind. He remembered explaining the world via the endless knot to a man twice his age.</p><p>There was no wind.</p><p>Sometimes there are no explanations for things. He could blame it on the pipes, on the venting system, but no.</p><p>Was it a sign?</p><p>He looked at his face in the mirror. At the byakugō in the center of his forehead. He laughed bitterly. To say he was Wutain or Buddhist would be saying he was not a Turk, that he could ever be a man of principle—they were at odds, and yet, when he stared at the water now, he scooped it up as if it was holy—life, suffering, death, rebirth. Wutain, Buddhist—these were outward masks he wore. He looked at the water for a moment, then slowly tilted his head back and let the water slip through his fingers and run all over his face, go in his hair, on his suit—whose material just let the water collect in circular drops and roll off. Then he undid the chain plug on the sink and watched the water drain, just like that. Everything in the universe swallowed up like the Big Bang in reverse. All those new molecules, all those new energies and compressions, all gone. Gaia, gone.</p><p>When he left, he told no one. He had nothing on him.</p><p>But he was never coming back.</p><p>An hour by foot out of Edge was a manmade lake full of Koi. Lilly pads spanned the breadth of it. It was routinely cleaned. The water was clean and sparkling. When he reached it no one was around save rabbits hopping through the fields of vegetation, over the smooth-hewn rocks stacked on top of each other, over the wooden bridge some called “the kissing bridge”. But not a soul was here.</p><p>He climbed down into the lake, suit and shoes, and let himself submerge. He swore he could hear things.</p><p>
  <em>If this was meant for me, why does it hurt so much? And If you’re not made for me, why did we fall in love?</em>
</p><p>He thought drowning would be more difficult, but it was almost peaceful. The koi swam about his body, kissing him. The sun and sky looked beautiful through the water, his body being pushed and pulled like the forces of Gaia herself. If he was going to die, after everything, it was better to be on his own terms. In the water. He’d started his journey to his new life on the ocean, and while this wasn’t the ocean, it was more peaceful.</p><p>Just when he closed his eyes, the last of his breath leaving him, the bubbles making their way to the surface, his body jerking, a hand plunged into the water and he was pulled from it, coughing and sputtering.</p><p>“You don’t get to do that!” Reno hissed, struggling to pull Tseng out the rest of the way.</p><p>Tseng stared at him for a long time while Reno struggled.</p><p>“I used to have a fear of the water,” Tseng said hoarsely.Some Buddhist he was. “But it was the fishing boat I came to Junon on. I thought, surely I’ll die. The water was choppy. The boat almost turned over so many times. It would have been fitting, to die in water.”</p><p>“Don’t be like that,” Reno said desperately.</p><p>“I’m not needed anymore. The crisis is over. You don’t want me. What is there left to do?” Tseng whispered.</p><p>“Live! Truly live, Tseng! We don’t have to fear threats at our back at every moment! We’ve earned <em>peace</em>.”</p><p>“No,” Tseng said, shaking his head. “I cannot do that. I want to drop. I want to drop like a stone. I want to be done. I don’t want to come back. Coming back means a life without you.”</p><p>“But, Tseng,” Reno whispered. “I’m not your whole life. You are other things. You can work on yourself. You never got to.”</p><p>“And I never will,” Tseng said, smiling sadly as he dove back in.</p>
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